What a way to let people know what is deep down my heart! I will share my views on Chinese metaphysics with my audience without reservation. Please treat this blog as a public park where friends can exchange ideas.

Sunday, December 30, 2012

When you know something and tell people you know it, when you do not know something and admit that you do not know it, it is a display of wisdom.
When there is something you should know but you do not, when you mistakenly think you know something that you do not know, it is an anouncement of lack of wisdom.

In addition, I always remember:
To admit that there is something we do not know is a virtue. To pretend to know something that we do not know is a vice.

Sunday, December 16, 2012

New
invention should always be welcome in the world of Chinese Metaphysics.
However, the invention or discovery of a new theory must sit on solid
grounds from the metaphysical point of view.

When Li Xu Zhong
李虚中 in the Tang Dynasty 唐朝 started the study of Four Pillars of Destiny
四柱推命學, he employed the 24 jie and qi 節氣 to define the beginning and the
midpoint of the 12 months. Thus he was able to establish a method of
assessing the timeliness of the five elements. His work was not complete
as he used the year branch to represent the person and his analysis was
based on special combinations of stem and branches known as Shen Sha
神煞. Xu Zi Ping 徐子平 in the Song Dynasty 宋朝 modified and expanded the work
to have the day stem to represent the person and defined the 10 spirits
based on the elemental relationship with the day stem. It then became a
complete system.

Later, Zi Wei Dou Shu 紫微斗數 was invented and the charting method employed the Lunar Calendar.
This new system does not depend on the timeliness of the five elements
to define the brightness of the stars. It has its own foundation and is
more romantic in a sense. I spent a lot of time to try to reinvent the
charting method to use the Solar Calendar in order to avoid the leap
month. However, the many case studies I accumulated proved that it
simply did not work.

Likewise, I spent a lot of time to try to
use the Lunar Calendar to do Four Pillars charting. It was just out of
curiosity to see whether the calendar that everyone was familiar with in
ancient China could be used instead of Solar Calendar. First I must
admit that I was unable to establish a method to deal with the leap
month to convince myself. Anyway, I examined all the cases I accumulated
with different solar and lunar charts and found that the results were
less than acceptable. Even though it affects only a little bit about the
timeliness, it affects clashes and combinations a lot. The luck pillars
also change with different points of entry.

Well, I do not consider it was a waste of time. It was in fact time well spent.

Wednesday, December 12, 2012

First we have to know what is the Chinese Lunar Calendar. In this calendar, a year consists of 12 months with the first day of the month at New Moon. For some months, a month consists of 29 days while for the rest, a month consists of 30 days. 1 year consists therefore 354 days. There is a 11.24 days difference between a lunar year and a solar year. This will be compensated by adding a month to a leap year (閏年). The leap month (閏月) is the month without Zhong Qi. The natural outcome makes the lunar calendar very irregular.

If the year, month and day are all described by a stem-branch binomial, then each month will have to change on the New Moon day. How do we assign the stem-branch binomial to the Run Yue (閏月)? No matter what you do, it will be extremely artificial. The year stem-branch binomial is to change on the New Year day which is the first New Moon day of the year. Since the day stem-branch is another sequence, it does not create any problem. Now you can see that such a calendar does not describe the natural flow of qi.

Ever since the Four Pillars of Destiny 四柱推命學was invented by Xu Zi Ping 徐子平, the solar calendar was used. Zi Ping himself did not leave behind any document about his findings. The first collection of his work was found in Yuan Hai Zi Ping 淵海子平 written by Xu Sheng 徐升in the Song Dynasty 宋朝, not too much later than Xu Zi Ping.

However, there is still a difficult and unsolved problem even when we use the solar calendar. It is the placement of the International Date Line. It is unimaginable that we allow the day to change passing this line. However, since this line was chosen to avoid affecting populated areas, it has avoided the singular points (sorry to include a mathematical term here as I cannot think of anything better).